The use of single sign-on and multifactor authentication for accessing the Comodo Certificate Manager is in pilot mode for the month of September 2017. If your campus would like to participate in the pilot, contact Paul Caskey (pcaskey@internet2.edu).

We anticipate moving to production during October 2017.

The InCommon Certificate Service offers single sign-on convenience, and the security of multifactor authentication (MFA), for logging in to the Comodo Certificate Manager (CCM) buy those who administer their organization's certificates.

Single signon is available to RAOs (Registration Authority Officers) - the

The organization must have an identity provider in the InCommon Federation and also support MFA

Any organization using SSO must also use MFA

Benefits

The benefits for using SSO and MFA include:

Removes the need to maintain a separate set of login credentials with the Comodo Certificate Manager

Eliminates the need for the RAO to request password resets from InCommon (which is time-consuming for both RAOs and InCommon staff)

The InCommon Certificate service is used by organizations as the basis of internal and external trust. Protecting it with MFA reduces the likelihood of stolen credentials.

MFA protected SSO increases security by leveraging protected campus credentials that RAOs already use in their local context to access higher security services.

Single Sign On

Campus must have an identity provider in the InCommon Federation

The RAO uses federated identity via InCommon to log into the Comodo Certificate Manager (rather than credentials provided by Comodo)

If the campus has delegated responsibilities to DRAOs, those in that role do not need to use SSO once they are appropriately provisioned (since their work is approved to the RAO)

Multifactor Authentication

In addition to having an identity provider in the InCommon Federation, the campus must support MFA locally.

Specifically, the campus MFA implementation must support the REFEDS Multi-Factor Authentication Profile, an international standard adopted and maintained by the Research and Education Federations (REFEDS) organization, comprised of mor than 40 national federations (including InCommon).